So the Founder of Chick-fil-a Died

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Of course we’re not big on speaking ill of the dead, but Cathy represents a theory that we’re really fond of: Eventually all of the hateful, bigoted people from the generations where intolerance was deemed acceptable will just die off. Then, soon enough, everyone will have beautiful brown babies who’ve never even heard the word “transphobia” because it will no longer be a thing. And we’ll go to work in flying cars.

If you’re at a loss as to what any of this has to do with a dead chicken dealer, allow us to explain. Cathy was a “Christian” who never backed away from a chance to talk at length about his disapproval of gay marriage. He was the definition of what wrongly paints Christians as brainwashed robot freaks that picket soldier’s funerals.

His unpopularity was palpable in Los Angeles when the city’s first franchise opened shortly after Prop 8—the state’s ban on gay marriage—passed. For months, picketers in support of equality stood outside of the Sunset and Highland location
making sure that anyone attempting to get a spicy chicken sando knew they were giving money to a company owned and operated by a family that wanted to force their church on our state by donating over $5 million dollars to the cause.

In a 2012 interview with The Baptist Press, Cathy was quoted as saying, “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”

So the Chicken Man had beef with divorce, too? In a country where an estimated 3.6 percent of the population is gay or bisexual and 55 percent of the population has divorced their “first wives/husbands,” he’s saying that his fist-sized fried chicken sandwiches are only to be consumed by the remaining 41.4 percent of Americans that met his standards?

And let’s not forget to exclude single parents, remarried widows and widowers, children born “out of wedlock,” Atheists, and those who believe you’re bat-shit crazy if you twist the words of the bible to justify prejudice. It’s a shame we’ll never know how Cathy would feel if he were to learn that chickens are on the list of birds known to display “homosexual behavior.”

Yeah, we’ll take the number two with a side of judgment, please. Extra pickles.

In typical form, Cathy was singing a different tune when asked in 2014 if he regretted his public support of anti-gay marriage bills. He was quoted as saying, “I’m going to leave it to politicians and others to discuss social issues.” (Read: “I caught a bunch of shit from the media and outraged gay employees so, while I’m totally old and conservative and feel exactly the same way, I’m just going to slip cash to the ‘politicians and others’ who can say what I can’t for PR reasons.”)

Presumably he made this comment in an attempt to diffuse things before his company started to open chains in Chicago, New York and other urban areas, hoping to raise brand awareness among Millennials.

We will give Cathy this, though: His chicken is mother fucking delicious. And the buns are perfect. And those pickles? We didn’t know that angels shipped pickles from heaven, but that’s good to know. Waffle fries? The best!

We can’t wait until one of Cathy’s gay relatives (you know there’s a gay grandchild in the mix, there just has to be) takes over the company and donates millions to campaigns that focus on equal rights so we can finally eat there again without feeling like monomaniacs.